


Don’t Scare Me Like That (Please)

by CatcherOfDreams



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Clint Needs a Hug, Fix-It, Graphic depictions of violence - Freeform, M/M, PTSD, Phil Needs a Hug, SHIELD Husbands, Self Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, clint is not mentally stable by a long shot, graphic depictions of injuries, lots of swearing, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 03:56:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14926673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatcherOfDreams/pseuds/CatcherOfDreams
Summary: Clint is a mess on a good day, and a liability on a bad one.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay I am so bad at summaries!
> 
> This story has been in the works for a few months and I’ve really enjoyed writing it. I know I’m not the best writer ever but I hope it is okay to read!
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING: this story will contain graphic depictions of suicide, self harm, and life saving medical interventions. Please take care of yourself xx

Look no one could claim that Clint had it together.

In fact you could probably list 99% of SHIELD until you got to someone who had it together LESS than Clint - and those were the poor basterds that were plucked out of a cell half way around the world many months too late after a mission went sideways. 

Clint knows he’s a mess on a good day, and a fucking liability on a bad one.

Between his long history of childhood trauma (physical, emotional, verbal, sexual, you name it, he’s been on the receiving end of it by age 13 - no trauma left unexplored. Hurrah.) and the life he lived before joining SHIELD, it’s a miracle that he can actually function at all.

Well that’s the opinion of the psych department. And Clint tries very hard not to think about the psych department’s opinions. Or recommendations. Ever.

But see, the agreement is if he drags himself there once a month he remains mission cleared.

Doesn’t matter what he tells them, they know he’s a mess, but as long as he actually /shows up/ he can go out on missions and make a difference and try to prevent someone who is actually worth a damn from getting killed.

Well that’s the plan anyways. And his deal with Fury has tided him through the last 11 years at SHIELD. Show up to psych for an hour, continue to be cleared for missions.

Loki changes all that. Just another thing that’s different post-Loki.

 

Clint is sitting with his back against Coulson’s desk, facing the large window that somehow survived the attack on New York with barely a chip. He’s bouncing a rubber ball against the floor, hitting the too perfect window, before it returns back to his hand.

He studiously does not think.

Does not think about the empty chair next to him, where Coulson is meant to be sitting. Doesn’t think about the apartment downtown that he’s just been told was demolished during the battle. Doesn’t think about how Loki paged through his soul like a fucking magazine and found Phil written across every single kind-light-happy-loving page of him.

Doesn’t think about how it felt to share Loki’s consciousness as he stabbed Phil - helpless and forced to watch his world bleed out in front of him at 30,000 feet (and falling)

He doesn’t think. 

He doesn’t-

Fuck.

The ball bounces away from him and his head falls back to bang lightly against the solid desk. The slightly chipped glass mocks him. He’s infinitely more chipped than this stupid piece of glass. He wonders what’ll happen when the pieces of himself start to fall apart?

He knows the others are trying to find him. The fact they haven’t yet speaks of Fury’s intervention.

He was Phil’s best man at their wedding, and many years before that gave Clint probably the most fearsome shovel talk in the history of shovel talks. Fury loved Phil, and Clint knows Fury is mourning too.

Clint tries his hardest to breathe through his precious few minutes alone, trying to appreciate the relative calm before psych and neurology and medical and the entire weight of SHIELD descends on him.

Mind control isn’t rare.  
The world is a strange place, with supernatural abilities even stranger.

But being mind controlled and subsequently coming too damn fucking close to singlehandedly taking down a top international security organisation, whilst also murdering numerous friends and colleagues and your /husband/ - that’s a new one for all of them.

Clint feels his breath hitch in his throat, and idly realises he’s hyperventilating. He drags himself into a tight ball to prevent his body shaking itself apart, short, sharp gasps all he can manage. He shouldn’t be breathing when he’s the whole reason his husband isn’t.

He shouldn’t be breathing at all.

_____

 

Fury finds him curled up in the same position 2 hours later, after he’d punched in the override codes for Phil’s office - Clint staring blankly at the slightly chipped windows, hands grasping his heavily scarred forearms tightly, and tears trailing slowly down his face.

Nick understands. He messages psych.

Barton has been a mess since his first contact with SHIELD a decade ago, when they dragged him in after a suicide attempt. Looking at the man now, Nick knows keeping him alive is going to be one of the greater challenges he’s ever faced.

And goddamn is it going to take a lot more than Barton’s once a month mandatory visits... Nick takes out his phone again, messaging the top psychiatrists on his payroll for advice, and sends a meeting request to Stark, citing the meeting as both highly classified and sensitive.

He expects the combination of those words should pique the mans interest enough to actually show up and listen.

Part of Nick’s “masterplan” of sorts involves Stark agreeing to house the Avengers - specifically Barton.

This is because after knowing Barton for over a decade Fury knows the only hope in hell they have of keeping the archer alive rests with the constant surveillance capabilities of Starks AI.

And honestly even then Jarvis might fail. But there’s a chance it’ll succeed, that Nicks whole plan might succeed.

Fury hopes it’ll be enough.


	2. Chapter 2

The story of how Phil recruited Clint ten years ago is both highly classified, and widely speculated about.

 

All that most SHIELD personnel know is Coulson took the Hawkeye assignment after 2 years of chasing him, and after SHIELD had expended their last level 5 agent willing to take on the case.

 

And that Coulson brought him in in under 24 hours.

 

The truth is Sitwell has limped into headquarters with a nasty bone-bruise on his left thigh from an arrow fitted with something similar to putty, and spent half the debrief grumbling about their marks “fucking circus tricks” and “borderline insanity” 

Hawkeye was running hard, had been for years, and seemed to be growing more careless and dangerous as the months crawled on. He’d still never killed a government agent, simply disposed of them in variously painful ways if they got in the way of his missions.

 

He still had a moral compass, or so Phil had thought as he flicked through the case file on Hawkeye. The last known sighting was 2 days ago, when he paid cash for a week stay in a derelict hostel that was another of many false trails the man had laid for them.

Phil picked up the black and white photo from the hostels security feed, Hawkeye’s face clearly visible. Something about the man in the photo bothered Phil. He’d provided SHIELD with a multitude of false leads in the past, why should this one be any different?

 

Somehow, Coulson suspected this one was very different.

 

The man looked haggard, and he doesn’t know why that particular fact sets off alarm bells in Phil’s head, but Hawkeye has always been a resilient and careful target - never stopping, never making a mistake, and never, ever looking like a man who’s run out of options. 

Phil grabs his coat, checks the clip on his handgun automatically, and types the address of the hostel into his GPS. It turns out to be only 20 minutes drive from SHIELD HQ, another reason it’s been dismissed as a false lead.

 

With peak hour traffic it ends up taking closer to 40 minutes before he is face to face with the door that by all rights should not be hiding a world class assassin and unmatched archer.

Coulson takes out his lock picking gear, before registering the door isn’t locked.

Wrong.

Sure it hasn’t been his case before about 4 hours ago, but he’s closely followed the progress (or lack there of) for the last 2 years, and this is wrong.

 

The door opens with a loud scrape across uneven floorboards, revealing a small musty room with barely space for the double bed, and an adjoining bathroom. The bed is a mess of clothes, pizza boxes, and papers. The bathroom door is closed and Coulson can hear no movement beyond the shower running.

That door isn’t locked either, and he glances around the room as he decides whether to open the door or wait for the occupant to exit. That is until he sees the bow stashed hap-hazardously under the bed, unsecured and unmonitored in the unlocked room.

 

Coulson had watched grainy YouTube footage of Hawkeye jumping off a 36 story building in Moscow after his bow, catching it before deftly shooting a grappling arrow into the side of an adjacent building to catch his fall.

That was three years ago. The same bow was lying here now, vulnerable. Phil’s alarm bells were deafening.

 

He draws his weapon and approaches the bathroom door, taking a moment to appreciate just how far beyond the rule book he was going on this self-appointed op of his.

The door swung open and the first thing that Phil thinks is “red”

 

Red everywhere.

 

Hawkeye is slumped in a corner, wedged between the shower stall and the wall, and thick blood covers the tiled floor. It pumps rhythmically from deep, deep cuts along both of the mans forearms.

The slow rhythmic pumping is a very bad sign - arterial bleeding. Trickling though, no longer the strong flow of arterial bleeding, even worse - massive blood loss.

 

Phil ignores the irrational pang of panic he feels, and dials for immediate SHIELD medical assistance. The operator confirms his codes, and informs him that medics will be with him within 15 minutes.

He hangs up and looks at the bleeding man as he shrugs out of his suit jacket. That might not be quick enough.

 

Arms marginally more free, Phil kneels and manhandles Hawkeye into the centre of the room, checking to ensure he’s still breathing and there’s nothing obstructing his airway.

There’s a silver chain around his throat, and Coulson instinctively pulls at it. A set of dog tags appear from under the mans shirt, the name “Clint F. Barton” stamped clearly on the plates of metal.

 

Phil moves on to check his pulse - it’s weak but present. He grabs his jacket in one hand, and the single bath towel in the other, and presses each down hard onto the wounds on the mans forearms.

It must hurt, a lot, as Clint stirs for the first time since Phil arrived.

He groans and his eyelids flutter open, revealing the most beautiful eyes Coulson has ever seen. He blinks a few times, confused and probably quite far down the road of hypovolemic shock, and manages a cracked whisper of “am I dead yet?”

And Phil doesn’t know why that breaks his heart, but god it does.

 

“No Clint, no you’re not” Phil replies, hoping his voice doesn’t noticeably shake as he continues putting pressure on the massive wounds.

Clint arches in pain at the contact, moaning weakly and blinking furiously in an obvious attempt not to lose consciousness.

The bleeding is slowing under Phil’s hands, but he suspects that’s more to do with Clint running out of blood rather than any clotting occurring.

 

“Please let me die”. Hawkeye mouths the words, not having enough energy left to make the sounds.

Coulson clamps down harder on the wounds and swallows around a lump in his throat. No. Just no. This cannot be Hawkeye. This broken, empty husk cannot be the beautiful resilient careful /moral/ archer that has been running circles around them for the past 2 years

 

But it is. And Coulson cannot do anything beyond answer, “Never. Never Clint, you hear me? I’m not letting you die, okay. Not today or any other day.”

 

Clint looks at him with something that looks a lot like confusion, a lot like pain, and a hell of a lot like fear, and maybe even something like hope, before his eyes flutter closed and his breathing (terrifyingly) shallows even more.

 

SHIELD medical is still several minutes out, and Coulson hopes beyond hope they’ll make it in time. Clint is barely breathing now, and his pulse is barely perceptible. He’s lost a lot of blood. So much blood.

Phil must lose a few minutes of time staring at the bloody floor whilst feeling for Clint’s pulse and listening to his quiet, uneven breathing, because he comes back to the sound of booted feet running towards him. 

The medics burst into the room and a storm of activity descends on the unconscious man. Coulson briefed them on the situation, and they’d come prepared with litres of saline and O- blood.

 

He hoped it was enough.


	3. Chapter 3

It took 18 months before Clint trusted Phil in the field.

Phil was assigned Clint’s case after he was medically stable, had been through a hashed attempt at a debrief, and agreed to sign on to SHIELD under one condition.

That the man who found him was his handler.

 

That was an awkward discussion with Fury. Nick was his best friend and he’d survived the worst days of his life next to the man. They discovered that after holding someone’s eyeball in your bare hand it kinda forged a special connection between soldiers...

So to sit down and have a lengthy conversation with your best friend and boss about being solely responsible for an attractive, wildly skilled, severely suicidal, incredibly damaged young man who’s life you’d singlehandedly saved due to a hunch and an escapade in throwing out the rule book and ignoring personal safety....

Yeah, awkward is one word for it... 

Honestly Phil is just glad he’s left with his balls intact after the amount of risks he took and the absolute mess he’d dragged back to SHIELD’s high security high clearance psych area...

But Nick agrees that the mess that is Clint Barton is safer in their hands than anyone else’s, and would be an incredibly beneficial asset to SHIELD.

It all rests on whether the joint efforts of psych and Phil can keep this guy alive, and hopefully show him there’s a life worth living out there for him.

 

Phil is damn nervous the first time he’s scheduled to meet Clint after their initial meeting.

He knows Clint asked for him, specifically. He’s seen the psychiatric reviews and debrief interviews, which have regularly raised more questions than answers.

Turns out that Hawkeye was an orphan before running away to the circus (Coulson triple checked that story, because come on, really?), before he ended up joining the marine corps. The details on how he found his way there are sketchy, but not as sketchy as his service record, there and afterwards, which is practically non-existent.

Clint refuses to talk about it, and when pressed for information will clam up and stare into the distance for however long it takes until the subject is changed.

He’s touchy about certain subjects, but will animatedly discuss others, such as bow specs, arrows he’d designed, the best pizza shops in the surrounding 5 block radius...

Hawkeye’s entire service record simply list two facts, that he was ex-special forces and he was honourably discharged, with the rest redacted.

Phil’s request for further information was declined. He tried not to think about what the man he’s about to meet had been through to pull that sort of widespread classification.

 

Phil meets Clint for the first time since he saved his life, and is again struck by how young and beautiful the archer was. He had smiled nervously at Phil, almost as if embarrassed at the amount of emotion he’d displayed whilst literally bleeding out in Coulson’s arms. He had nevertheless followed it up by telling him he could fuck right off if he was going to ask one more goddamn question about his past.

To be honest, it was pretty much friendship at first “fuck off”

 

It took time. 18 months of working together until Clint truely trusted him to make the best calls on the field and to have his back no matter what.

18 months of movie nights and safe houses, bullet wounds and kidnappings and torture cells, dinners of beer and pizza and carefully chosen stories about their past.

Clint didn’t remember falling in love with the man, but his best estimate is he fell in love with him around the same time he trusted him.

 

———————

 

Fury set up the once a month psych visit system almost 12 months after Clint had been signed on with SHIELD. He’d been going missing for extended periods of time, only appearing for training, missions, reporting, and sometimes food.

He was beginning to be covered in fresh scars again, was losing weight, and Nick knew there wasn’t a doctor on earth that could fix him, but they needed to at least see him every now and then to get a handle on what he was going through.

And they couldn’t do that if they couldn’t find the slippery basterd outside of missions.

Nick had had enough.  
So he’d set up a SHEILD protocol for Hawkeye. Show up to psych once a month, talk for an hour, tell the truth, and he could remain mission cleared and continue to do whatever the fuck he was doing.

 

At first it was torturous.  
Clint couldn’t imagine anything worse than being trapped in a room with someone for a whole hour discussing his mental health.  
As he said, fucking torturous.  
But he always showed up on time for his appointment, and told the truth, and remained mission cleared.

 

Clint knew why he was putting himself through these 4 weekly torture sessions - because with SHIELD he felt like he was making a difference. That maybe he was saving people and maybe he was the good guy for once.

And maybe it was because he knew he was the best sniper for the missions they sent him on - and his contribution ensured the highest chance of a good outcome.

The bottom line - Clint put himself through it because it’d be worse to be taken off missions and know that there were good people out there at a greater risk without him covering their backs, because he was too much of a coward to go to the psych department once a month.

So he did it, for 11 years, every month like clockwork he’d attend his appointment and tell the truth, and it didn’t matter what he said because they knew from day one he was fucked up.

And it didn’t matter that he was covered in scars, underweight, and usually couldn’t sleep. SHIELD understood that often the people who could do superhuman things, who could walk into absolutely insane situations and pull a good outcome out of the wreckage, weren’t usually the most “normal” people out there.

SHIELD understood it, they respected it, and treated their people when indicated or necessary. And for Clint treatment was something he outrightly refused, so with the once monthly appointments arrangement made he was free to do his thing, save lives, kick ass, kill bad guys, the works... 

 

Until the day a god fell from the sky and the precarious sanity he’d built crumbled alongside the New York skyline.


	4. Chapter 4

It took Phil 18 months to gain Clint’s trust, and only 6 additional months to finally do something about the unresolved tension between the pair.

 

Looking back on it Phil would figure out that for Clint, trust and love were almost indistinguishable. Both incredibly unlikely. Both effectively beaten out of him at a young age. And both hard won and so cherished by Phil.

It’d finally happened after a mission. The WSC had fears about activity in Russia, and SHIELD was discretely dispatched to monitor the situation. It was a low risk mission, and had predictably gone off without a hitch.

Post-debrief Barton was lounging in Phil’s office on the sofa that Phil would deny until his last breath that he’d bought just for that reason (he had. Shut up.)

 

“Hey Coulson, um. Would you by any chance like to get dinner some time? With me?”

Phil, stupidly, hadn’t even looked up from the report he was filing, “well I guess it is nearly 20:00” 

It was the solid minute of silence following his comment that finally got his attention off the report and directed at the archer who appeared both awkward and hurt.

Shit. Phil thought. I am an idiot. He took a deep breath.

 

“Barton. When you say, ‘get dinner’ are you implying as friends, or a- a date?” Phil stumbles over the words slightly, because honestly why would someone as beautiful as Clint want to date someone as plain as him...

“Uh. Well.” Clint looked down, rubbing the back of his neck, a classic nervous twitch Phil hadn’t seen in a while.

“Honestly sir, a date. But only if you want to. I mean- I can understand... if you don’t want- me..”

Barton’s face was a warm red, and the level of out-of-sorts he was was evident when Phil stood up and rounded his desk, approaching the archer famed for his eyesight who refused to even look at him.

 

Clint was still struggling to fit in at SHIELD. He wasn’t accustom to relying on anyone, had self worth and mental health issues, and some pretty significant PTSD from his days in the military (and probably childhood too) 

Phil wouldn’t be Clint’s handler if he didn’t have a unique understanding of all these things. But his understanding of Clint’s abilities and strengths and good qualities weighed more to Phil than any struggles the man may have.

Slowly Phil knelt next to the (Barton’s) couch and waited for Clint to meet his eyes. When it immediately became clear it wasn’t going to happen, Phil decided to plow on regardless and simply said,

“I’d love to go on a date with you”

 

It took a moment before Clint, clearly expecting rejection and to be kicked out of SHIELD or something equally as horrible, actually comprehended the words, and sharply looked up at Phil.

And ever so slowly Clint smiled, and then started to quietly laugh. Phil returned the smile and as cliché as it sounded, thought that maybe his purpose in life was to make Clint laugh more.

 

—————-

 

There were ups and downs, just like any relationship. Clint’s lack of any healthy relationship role models in his life so far meant he often felt he was flying (falling) blind...

But they made it work. Clint moved in with Phil, and eventually started to feel less like a guest and more like an equal in their home. And a year after Clint asked the fateful dinner question, Phil (recklessly) got down on one knee (during a live op) and proposed.

It was perfect.

They got married in the winter and Fury was Phil’s best man.

Clint cried the whole ceremony, and Phil managed to hold off tears until their first kiss as a married couple.

Both men could hardly believe they’d got so lucky.


	5. Chapter 5

Fury scrapped Barton off the floor with the help of psych and a couple of burly security grunts they managed to rustle up. He wasn’t a security risk or resisting psych, but if Fury was right he was a couple of inches from catatonic and lugging a muscular man around base wasn’t anyone’s idea of a good day.

Unless you were a security grunt. Whatever.

 

Fury had, objectively, more important things to do today than get Barton’s crazy white ass somewhere safe - but after this many years of friendship with Phil and Clint, Fury was exactly where he needed to be post-end of the world event.

Clint didn’t seem to notice the halting shuffle to psych, which okay, probably wasn’t good and reinforced Fury’s theory about the whole inches from catatonia situation. Damn.

Fury got it, you’d have to kill him before he admitted it to anyone, but Clint was a top agent, a loyal and kind friend, and a great guy. But damn, Phil could’ve fallen in love with someone a touch more stable. Motherfucker.

After depositing Barton in psych Fury left for his meeting with Stark - which had been organised surprisingly swiftly given the man had fallen through a giant fucking rift in space less than 12 hours ago.

Goddamn this was giving him a headache.

 

————

 

“Barton...”

“Oi Barton..”

“BARTON!”

 

“Mhph” startling awake Clint staggering into something that might’ve resembled a fighting position if he was more, well, rested, fed, healthy, whole, you name it...

“Yikes Barton, chill, it’s Stark.” Tony was standing, still with his ridiculous sunglasses on, inside Clint’s padded psych room. Great.

 

Clint moved back to his surprisingly passable memory foam mattress, “wh’t do ya want, Stark” he mumbled, too tired and too empty to actually care”

Stark frustratingly began to hustle him back into a standing position, jabbing the whole time.

 

“Well look I don’t know the whole story here, but looks like you might need somewhere to crash seeing as your flat has now been flattened, literally. So being the generous billionaire genius I am has decided with Fury’s blessing that you and the rest of the merry band of superhero’s can live in my large and mostly whole tower.”

 

Stark is ushering him out of psych as he talks. Which is odd, as Clint can’t really remember a time which being locked in psych made more sense than right now with the whole brainwashed, compromised, murdering his friends, murdering his husband, etc... 

And as Stark manages to get him out of Headquarters untouched and into a discreet black car, Clint can’t help but think of the stupid barely scratched window in Phil’s office and Phil’s promise to always be there for him and how he isn’t sure how long he’s got until he shatters like the window should’ve... 

 

———————-

 

The answer is 276 hours.

Clint has tried but the ticking clock in his head will not stop. An old snipper timekeeping trick that has served him well for years, now constantly counting the hours since he felt Loki’s spear grind through Phil’s body and watched through the God’s eyes as his whole life bled out at 30,000 feet on the helicarrier Clint nearly destroyed.

 

Nat has been by a few times, following him through his floor at Stark Tower for a few hours, like a deadly Russian ghost. He knows she doesn’t have a frame of reference for how to deal with this, but appreciates her silent companionship more than he could probably tell her.

 

She finds him sobbing so hard on day 5 that blood vessels in his eyes and nose burst, and he is left with dark red eyes and one hell of a blood nose. She doesn’t return after that, but JARVIS says in his politely English accent that it’s probably a coincidence as he intercepted a message saying she was desperately needed on clean-up.

 

Despite briefly seeing all the Avengers, Clint hasn’t seen anyone in a few days. He doesn’t remember how long, but they are all needed on clean-up. Clint understands but also deep down wishes he was out there with them, trying to clean up the mess he’d created and try to scrub some of the red off his ledger. 

 

It’s been 11 days since Loki and Clint knows JARVIS is monitoring him. The omnipotent A.I. under strict instructions to ensure Clint eats and doesn’t cause harm to himself.

He knows is a suicide watch, but he can’t bring himself to be angry. Honestly it’s the least invasive suicide watch he’s ever been on.

And he does realise it’s probably bad he has the level of comparative history on the subject...

Whatever.

 

But see, Stark didn’t design the floors and the newly rebranded Avengers Tower with suicide watch on his mind, and as yet he had failed to find any surveillance equipment inside the bathroom?

And man Clint had searched.  
Beyond a speaker and microphone for JARVIS to communicate with if necessary, there was no visual information gathered from guests in the bathroom...

 

A glaring oversight in Clint’s opinion.  
But then again the whole world nearly ended and New York took a bad hit, hundreds of people are dead and alien carcasses litter the streets - so the fact there are no cameras in the bathroom of Clint’s suicide-watch floor probably doesn’t hit the top of anyone’s priority list... 

 

Anyways. The answer to the question he’d been wondering all along is it was 276 hours after Phil died when Clint finally shattered to pieces.

He was sitting cross legged on the floor against the north facing window watching the cleanup crews steady progress.

Seemingly the only thing the same after Loki is that Clint’s eyesight remains superhuman, and he can see much, much further than the average person.

 

He watches as one crew only a couple of blocks from the tower slowly extract something from what used to be a cafe, as far as Clint can tell. As more debris is moved and the dust clears, Clint can clearly see the body of a teenage girl.

Clint starts to shake.

Fuck.

Holy fuck.

On top of all the loss, the murder performed by his own hands, the murder of his husband/best friend/fucking soulmate, his actions had caused the deaths of probably hundreds of civilians - some of them children.

What would Phil think of him? God, he’d be disgusted.

 

Clint couldn’t breathe. Clint didn’t deserve to breathe.

 

If he’d died those years ago, if Coulson hadn’t found him and saved him, maybe everyone would still be alive? Maybe Kyle from accounting and Rob from HR and the teenager two blocks away and /Phil/ would still be alive?

God it was his fault, and how did he deserve to breathe when he had killed so many good, kind, innocent, worthwhile people?

 

It was 276 hours and Clint had disabled the bathroom microphone, smashed the mirror, determinedly sliced through his heavily scarred forearms, and used the drawstrings from 2 pairs of track pants for a noose suspended from the sturdy shower stall.

He didn’t leave a note. No one would need one. He was broken and evil and shattered and done. Fucking done. They’d understand.

 

His last thoughts were about Phil, and how he’d be so disappointed to see him like this, but probably not surprised. 

No, not surprised.

 

Tears slipped free. Clint helplessly scrambled for purchase, his body’s natural reaction to choking despite just how much Clint wanted, needed, this to work.

See you soon, he thought.

He passed out.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil’s perspective

The hole in his chest was surprisingly the least of his issues, with the nanotechnology available to SHIELD healing the internal tissue damage and remaking bones and structures destroyed by Loki’s spear.

 

After awakening from a 4 day coma, and once he could keep his eyes open for more than 10 seconds, he glanced around the room, finding Nick sitting on his right in an uncomfortable visitors chair, assessing him quietly.

“Sir?” Phil croaked out, and Nick stood to press the bell for a cup of ice chips.

 

“You’ve been out for 4 days. We had you in a medically induced coma. What do you remember?”

 

Phil was frankly surprised, though grateful Nick kept with the tradition of monologuing as many facts as possible in medical to avoid any unnecessary worry about what had happened to them. He was struggling to remember things though... 

 

“I remember the battle: I was on the Helicarrier? I- I was stabbed by Loki? ... I think I shot him?”

Nick grimaced, “damn right you shot him, you dumb motherfucker - I mean really Phil? An untested weapon against a god, for all you knew it could’ve blown bubbles and-.” 

 

Phil was beginning to look increasingly distressed, he interrupted Fury’s reprimands for probably the first time ever.

“Nick. I can’t remember a thing from before the battle.”

 

His wide, panicked eyes lead to Fury pushing the bell a second time, and really no one in SHIELD ignores a call-bell when Fury himself is at the end of it.

 

Neurology is paged and do an urgent consult, and Phil quietly panics through a multitude of scans, questions, blood tests, pokes, lights in his eyes, and worst of all - worried looks. 

In the end their explanation is quite simple: it’s most probably severe retrograde amnesia, likely due to the traumatic circumstances of his injuries and time in the medically induced coma.

The neurologists are certain his memories will return eventually, most likely in the next few hours to days, and reassure him that the brain is an odd and complex thing, and to try to have faith that it’ll be okay.

 

Phil tries his best to be reassured, but is mainly focusing all his attention on trying to remember /something/. Like how he met Nick? How he knows what SHIELD stands for? But the harder he tries the worse his blinding headache gets.

 

Fury gets wise to his idea pretty quickly, and despite the evident exhaustion showing on his friends face, heaves himself to his feet to lightly punch the only part of Phil that isn’t sore - his lower leg.

“Stop being an idiot and trying to force it. Give it more than an hour and a half maybe rest for once in your life? And now I gotta go fix a mess, so you” Nick glares pointedly at Phil, and really how does a man with one eye glare so effectively, “will not jeopardise your recovery by being a damn fool, all right”

Phil nods tiredly in affirmative

 

————

 

It isn’t until 7 days later walking back to his dull SHIELD medical room from a physiotherapy session that a nurse drops her morning cup of black coffee. He isn’t sure if it’s the smell or the fact his husband is so clumsy some mornings that black coffee could land anywhere feasible, and many places unfeasible, that all the memories that were just out of reach came slamming back.

 

He shakily lowers himself to the ground in the hospital-like hallway - the world seeming faraway and difficult to hear over the buzzing and dizziness. “Clint,” is all he can say, and he notices as the nearby senior nurse takes out her pager and dials Nick.

“Clint.”

His husband. The strongest man he’d ever met but at the same time one of the most fragile. His best friend and the love of his life who’d been taken by Loki.

“Did Clint make it?”

 

Fury arrives surprisingly fast seeing as the world nearly just ended, and looking after Phil is probably not the mans top priority.

 

Phil is hyperventilating, too much information and emotions and fears racing around his mind, and Fury clasps a hand on his trembling shoulder and crouches down in front of him, looking him with serious honesty on his face.

 

“Clint’s fine. He’s at Stark’s madhouse tower. We got him back. Loki didn’t win, we got him back, okay. Focus on breathing Phil, or the nurses are gonna have to sedate you, your heart isn’t the best shape it’s ever been in, all right?”

 

Phil gasps for breath and nods affirmative. Clint’s okay. Clint’s with his team at Stark tower.

 

After seemingly forever, but what probably wasn’t more than 10 minutes, Phil’s breathing is under control enough to stand and unsteadily make his way to his room in medical.

He’s exhausted, and Nick promises him he’ll be back to explain everything once Phil has had a bit of time to recover. Phil wants to argue but is completely wiped out, and after Nick swears on his remaining eye that Clint is fine and he’ll explain everything soon, Phil drifts into an uneasy but exhausted sleep.

 

Nick returns to his office, there is, after all, the end of the world to clean up after.


	7. Chapter 7

Midday at the Avengers tower was quiet, every able-bodied and able-minded person out on the streets aiding in the massive clean up efforts.

 

Hence, when Jarvis’s emergency alert sounds, the only one in the tower to respond is Banner.

Despite his guilt, Bruce is infinitely aware of how precarious him being out in Manhattan would be during the clean up.

 

The high tensions, the memories that might be triggered, the loss of life - it would be a disaster sending him out there and everyone knows the last thing the city needs right now is the Hulk.

 

So when Jarvis’s sounds the alarm for a life threatening medical emergency, Bruce drops everything (carefully, it is the biohazards lab) and bolts to the nearest elevator, knowing Stark’s A.I. would direct him to the emergency.

“Doctor Banner, it appears my monitoring equipment has been disabled at the location source, but the functional tower wide lifesign system is picking up a lifesign matching Agent Barton’s in serious distress, located in his personal bathroom quarters, sir.”

 

The elevator moved faster than Bruce remembered, and he held on to the rail as it shot up the 20 or so floors between the labs and Barton’s floor.

 

“Chances of it being a system error?” He had to ask, even though he suspects with what little he knows about Barton that it’s doubtful.

 

“Less than a 1% chance of being a system error. All doors have been unlocked, sir”

 

The elevator doors open and Bruce stumbles out, catching himself on the corridor wall before sprinting through the floor.

“Clint?” He reaches the bathroom, all floors are set out identically so it takes barely a moment to reach the room.

 

He bursts through the door, already suspecting to some degree what he is going to find on the other side.

Despite his medical background and mental preparation, he still freezes for a nauseating 4 seconds in stark horror at the scene in front of him.

 

Clint is suspended by a thin noose cutting into the swollen skin of his neck, causing a terrifying line of dark blood. His arms are dripping steadily from deep wounds along both forearms, cutting through ropes of old scar tissue. His face is discoloured and swollen, the universal face of suffocation.

 

“Holy fuck, CLINT”

 

Bruce barely ever was thankful for the intermittent superhuman strength that accompanied the Hulk, but today as he effortlessly tore through the noose and caught Clint easily he was grateful.

 

In moments Clint was prone on the ground of his bedroom, Bruce shouting orders at Jarvis who could now see and monitor them clearly, whilst swiftly assessing Clint.

No breathing. No heartbeat. Substantial blood loss. Possible crushed airway.

 

He began CPR, having to put extra thought into monitoring his strength with the excess of adrenaline in his system - the last thing he needed was to crush Clint’s rib cage and sternum.

 

As he worked he felt and heard a rib crack and tried not to let it falter his work - ribs cracked in CPR all the time. Keep going. Save Clint. Keep going.

 

Jarvis had notified the other Avengers and Nick Fury of the situation, and as the team made arrangements to return to the tower as quickly as possible, Fury read the message update and quietly swore.

 

Message Reads: “Agent Barton found unresponsive 27 seconds ago, no signs of life, situation ongoing, medical teams dispatched, updates will follow. JARVIS”

 

Half way across the city from where Banner desperately was attempting resuscitation, Nick prayed for only the 4th time in his life, that maybe, just maybe Clint Barton might make it.

 

The EMT’s burst into Barton’s bedroom followed by Stark in his suit - of course Tony would be in his suit, its the quickest way to get anywhere.

Bruce continues CPR uninterrupted, listening to them take in the situation with the help of Jarvis.

 

Stark exits the suit and is looking pretty grey - Bruce instantly writes him off as any help right now. One of the EMT’s, a large guy with intricate tattoos and a slight British accent watches Bruce’s form and decides to take over the airway - delivering breaths in between quickly asking questions.

 

Obviously Tony has organised this to be an advanced trauma team of some kind, and they came heavily loaded with a huge supply of equipment. Bruce is damn thankful.

The EMT on Clint’s airway continues his assessment, placing defibrillator pads, ECG stickers, and moments later turns to his 4 colleagues and says “guys from the feel of it I think we need a trachy- sooner rather than later”

 

Bruce, at the instructions of the defibrillator unit, takes his hands off Clint and silently waits to hear if he is in a shockable rhythm - if he has a chance at survival.

He silently watches as two of the team prepare for an emergency tracheostomy - a procedure to bypass part of the upper airway and place a tube for breathing further down in the throat.

 

Another of the team is working on assessing Clint’s mangled arms and stopping the bleeding, as well as placing and starting IV fluids.

The last member of the team seems to be running the show, and is carefully watching everyone’s progress. The defibrillator machine is making sounds that actually sound positive, and after a moment informs them that a shock is advised.

 

Everyone backs off, holding their hands up with practiced ease, as the original EMT responder presses the button and Clint’s body jerks. After that it’s all hands on deck, and the ECG is looking somewhat promising.

 

Bruce loses track of what’s going on after a swift number of needles and medications are administered and the emergency surgery begins. He numbly moves to sit next to Tony on Clint’s unmade bed, who is looking desperately pale and quite unwell.

Bruce knows his shock will hit later, and right now the detached numbness is his best asset as a medical responder. He places a hand on Tony’s shoulder and can feel his slight trembling.

 

The highly skilled medical response team, that Bruce would later find out was made up of expert emergency surgeons who were on call for such situations following the battle - curtesy of Tony Stark, managed to swiftly place an emergency breathing tube and manually breathe for Clint - pumping oxygen into his lungs, bypassing the crushed windpipe.

 

Bruce turned and murmured to Tony what was going on, the breathing tube and the bandages and needles and drugs and why the beeping on the ECG machine was damn near the best noise any of them might ever hear - because it meant Clint’s heart was actually beating. 

 

Tony continued to look pale and shaky through the surgeons preparing Barton for transport and discussing which medical facility to take him to, but Bruce could see him working to pull together some semblance of his infamous ‘Tony Stark’ persona to, in this case, probably prevent a breakdown.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I think our final destination won’t be any of those hospitals but rather SHIELD”

Likely due to the craziness of the last few days, none of the medical personnel even blinked at the notion of taking a critically ill man to a government facility. Instead they voiced their agreements as they continued to work on stabilising Clint for transport.

 

All in all under 7 minutes later Clint’s situation is looking marginally less dire.

 

In an organised bustle of activity the challenge of transporting began. A follow up message was sent to Nick Fury, following the longest 7 or so minutes of his life.

 

Message Reads: “Agent Barton prepared for transport to SHIELD medical facility in a critical condition. Requesting high level trauma care and ICU placement upon arrival. JARVIS”

 

Nick releases a breath he didn’t realise he was holding. Barton’s critical, but alive. He begins organising care as directed by Jarvis.

 

The team arrives in SHIELD ICU 19 minutes later flanked by Stark and Banner, both looking shellshocked and pale.

Barton is immediately connected to a waiting ventilation machine via the hole in his throat, which Fury realises is a pretty bad sign, before the man is obscured by a seemingly endless number of doctors and nurses as they begin their individual tasks and assessments.

The saving grace is the somewhat irregular but /present/ beeping of a pulse throughout the room - he is still alive.

 

As Nick moves to stand next to the silent Banner and Stark, he thinks about how much of a train wreck it’s going to be telling Phil what’s happened.

The real train wreck will be if Barton doesn’t pull through.

Nick watches the machines, numbers not looking good, but also not looking dead...

 

Goddamn this kid better pull through.


	8. Chapter 8

Phil wasn’t wrong.

 

He enters the ICU located at the eastern end of the corridor and is ushered into a large meeting room. He is unsurprised to find Natasha. She looks like shit, utterly exhausted, and seems genuinely shocked to see him.

Goddamn it Fury, he really didn’t tell fucking anyone that Phil had pulled through?

 

In the seat next to Natasha sat Steve, who was acting as the backbone of the team. Bruce and Tony were seated across the room, both looking pale and shaken. Phil suspected they had a larger roll in the situation - backed up by the bloodstains on Bruce’s clothing that Phil was trying very hard to ignore.

 

Steve stood, looking between Fury and Phil several times, before rounding on Nick.

“I don’t know what game you’ve been playing here, but from what I can see one of my teammates has been hurt because of it, and I think I speak for all of us when I say I’d like an explanation.”

 

Phil chooses to reply before an outright argument can break out.

“Steve. Everyone. Nick will explain everything, especially to me, eventually, but please can it wait a few more minutes. I really need to see my husband right now.”

 

None of them appear surprised to hear Phil is married to Clint, and he’s glad they were at least aware of just how much Clint had thought he’d lost in the battle.

“Of course,” Nat is the first to reply, and stands to accompany him out of the meeting room and across the ward, to the unmarked door where a hurricane of voices and medical noises were originating from.

 

The rest of the people around Phil seemed to fade away until it’s just him and Nat, standing side by side. She surprises him by turning and hugging him tightly. He holds her in return, and tries not to tense too much when she whispers “it’s bad Phil, it’s really bad.”

 

He let’s go and looks at her. She’s worried and scared. He nods. It doesn’t matter how bad it is, he needs to be there with Clint.

He takes Natasha’s hand and after carefully breathing for a few moments, he enters the room.

 

And stops right inside the door - black spots swamping his vision and knees threatening to give out.

Clint looks dead.

A team of people are still working on him, the only indication he’s alive being the beeping of a heart monitor. Until now he had no idea how Clint had chosen to ‘do it’.

 

Previously, a lifetime ago, he’d found Clint with deep valleys in both arms. He’d been a stranger then, but it’d still terrified Phil.

 

Clint had tried to end his life - and had come so close he was on a ventilator. Phil assessed his husband quickly, and the markings on his neck indicated the ventilator was to keep him breathing past a crushed windpipe. Strangulation.

 

Clint hung himself.

 

Phil Coulson feels his mask start to break. He needs to hold it together. He needs to know what’s going on and make the best calls for Clint whilst he can’t make them himself.

The doctors begin muttering about “down time” - a term for how long someone is clinically dead or their brain is without oxygen for. Clint was dead.

 

Clint died.

 

Phil’s knees give up the fight and he crumpled to the ground. He was distantly aware he was hyperventilating, and the black spots were encroaching further on his vision.

All pretences of him having it together have been dispelled. He feels more than sees Natasha manhandle him into a recently appeared seat with embarrassingly little effort on his part.

 

He closes his eyes and tries to focus on breathing and staying conscious. He listens to the doctors discussing surgical interventions on Clint’s arms and throat, and somewhere else too?

 

Phil is half thankful to hear that - it means they think Clint will survive. No use operating on someone who’s expected to die shortly...

The activity in the room continues as Phil tries his hardest to just keep present - to not panic and lose it, despite how tempting it is.

 

His husband is barely clinging to life and he needs to be there for him.

 

After a few minutes Phil stands and shakily pushes through medical personnel. He needs this.

He blanches when he catches sight of Clint’s face, swollen and discoloured almost beyond recognition. He misses his beautiful eyes, and is horrified when one of the nurses pushes Clint’s eyelid up to check the pupil with a torch and the whites of Clint’s eyes are dark red.

 

Phil is dizzy and overwhelmed, but carefully assesses before slowly grasping Clint’s unbandaged hand - mindful of the large cannula.

He only gets a few moments holding his husbands hand before a surgeon approaches Phil and quietly explains that the surgery will be beginning momentarily and Clint needs to be moved to the OR.

 

Phil nods and asks to see the forms and to sign the consents. He needs to know what’s going on. Phil Coulson is nothing if not in control. He needs this.

The surgeon explains the procedures and how different people would be performing different surgery’s depending on their speciality - one surgeon for Clint’s throat, one for the repairs of his arms, and one for an unknown degree of internal damage caused by CPR.

 

Despite the huge list of risks and complications and sheer fucking horror at the level of damage to his husbands body, Phil starts to feel a little bit better, knowing exactly what beast they are tackling and that the best people available are on the job.

 

Hell, if SHIELD can mend a hole in his heart, hopefully they can mend his husband too.


End file.
